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So that we are left wondering whence it came, from within or
without; and when it has gone, we say, "It was here. Yet no; it
was beyond!" But we ought not to question whence; there is no
whence, no coming or going in place; now it is seen and now not
seen. We must not run after it, but fit ourselves for the vision
and then wait tranquilly for its appearance, as the eye waits on
the rising of the sun, which in its own time appears above the
horizon- out of the ocean, as the poets say- and gives itself to
our sight.
This Principle, of which the sun is an image, where has it its
dawning, what horizon does it surmount to appear?
It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect which has
held itself at rest towards the vision, looking to nothing else
than the good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in
a perfect surrender, and now tranquilly filled with power and
taking a new beauty to itself, gleaming in the light of that
presence.
This advent, still, is not by expectation: it is a coming without
approach; the vision is not of something that must enter but of
something present before all else, before the Intellect itself
made any movement. Yet it is the Intellect that must move, to
come and to go- going because it has not known where it should
stay and where that presence stays, the nowhere contained.
And if the Intellect, too, could hold itself in that nowhere- not
that it is ever in place; it too is uncontained, utterly
unplaced- it would remain for ever in the vision of its prior,
or, indeed, not in vision but in identity, all duality annulled.
But it is Intellect [having a sphere of its own] and, when it is
to see, it must see by that in it which is not Intellect [by its
divinest power].
No doubt it is wonderful that The First should thus be present
without any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it
not; but wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would
be more wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this
contrary nor the wonder at it can be entertained. But we must
explain:
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